


Amatsumikaboshi

by CherFleur



Series: The Blind Dog [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Age Difference, Depression, Disassociation, Healthy Coping Mechanisms, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Multi, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:07:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23010712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherFleur/pseuds/CherFleur
Summary: Born into war and buried in grief. Every breath is heavy and laden with things that cannot be changed.His heart was a broken thing, carelessly passing underfoot, grinding down deeper and deeper into the grit. There was little point to most things, little point to reaching for more when everything he touched Burned.Sometimes, though, the world cracked open instead, and light spilled out.
Relationships: Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Kagami, Uchiha Izuna & Uchiha Kagami, Uchiha Kagami & Uchiha Madara
Series: The Blind Dog [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/953319
Comments: 22
Kudos: 180





	Amatsumikaboshi

**Author's Note:**

> So this is shorter than Saudade, but is the companion piece to it. It's... kind of messed up, actually, but it gives you a glimpse into Kagami's mind. Where most of what Tobirama saw was biased, so is Kagami, keep that in mind. 
> 
> Grammar and Typos, or anything else I should tag as a warning!

His father had hated the Senju.

His mother had been indifferent.

When his father had died, he’d mourned him with his mother, lost with their Clan head to battle with the Senju. When he’d lost his mother, he’d grieved the Great Burning the way that all Uchiha with nothing left to love did.

He’d awoken his Mangekyō as her life had drained away, her body a dead weight in his too thin arms; he’d screamed, and Susanoo answered him.

Susanoo always answered when a heart cracked in two.

Everything inside him had boiled like acid, like the world deserved to burn they way he did, so that nothing could hurt him again in such a way. Normally, if a Uchiha was set Aflame at the last of their Chosen dying, the rest of the Clan would band together to deal with them. They’d put them down, take their eyes for whoever needed them most but still had love left in them, and then they’d be put to pyre.

Izuna had been close enough though, and crazy enough, to throw himself inside the enshrouding bones of a god. His frame had been longer, heavier and better nourished than Kagami’s, not to mention the years between them.

His heart had been beating quickly, his echoing crackle of lightning chakra riding along the agonized boom of his own. In comparison to the rage-grief-despair that had been running rampant through Kagami’s system, the embrace of his arms had been a soothing balm. Though blood had trickled down his face, it was the kindness in his cousin’s chakra that had brought _true_ tears to his eyes. Whole body sobs had wracked his frame as the world stopped warping around him, as glass melted back together into some semblance of a person.

By holding him, Izuna had held him together.

The god enshrouded in all Uchiha hearts and released by their eyes at the sacrifice of a loved one had given a pulse of chakra to clear the battlefield, and then dispersed; unneeded.

 _Alone, alone, alone, alone,_ his heart, his chakra had screamed, terrified of what a Uchiha alone in the world could become.

 _No, no, never_ , his cousin had brazenly broadcast, grip tightening until his ribs ached and his heart settled.

And that was how he decided to live.

Rebirth was an ugly thing, being born from the Flame which Burned you.

Kagami had been a mixture of the two, hating and not caring, but he’d come to love just one of them so deeply he choked on it.

~*~

Technically, Kagami was the 12th in line for Clan Head. His mother had been Third cousin’s with Tajima, and there were a few between him and the Mantle of Feathers. It would have been much too heavy for him, anyway. Madara burned like the sun stared at too long, powerful enough that he could slog through the omens the Mantle carried. Even Izuna, quicksilver and starlit was canny enough, strong enough, to hold onto his sense of self under its weight should he need to.

He was ten, and he was still hollow, still living on the echoes of affection lost and Izuna’s determination not to lose him. While Kagami’s chakra system was still compromised by the loss of his Chosen and the awakening of his Mangekyō, he could not choose again.

It would take years until he regained his equilibrium enough to do so. If he ever did.

For Kagami, it was like existing in a haze for a long time, as if smoke coiled around him. As if he watched his body perform functions and do what it was told while Izuna carefully sheltered him. In this state he would have made for explosive canon fodder for the Elders, would have been used as an example of what failure did to them.

Izuna kept them from him, taking Kagami’s Marks of Shame in his place, as Kagami couldn’t care about them anyway.

The only person he could feel anything for, could connect to, was Izuna.

Kind, mischievous Izuna. He ranted about Madara and his ridiculous crush on the Senju Clan Head whilst also complaining about his own Senju rival.

Tobirama.

_That stupid Tobirama created a new jutsu!_

_How did he do that flip?!_

_I can’t believe the_ nerve _of him!_

Even as dimmed as he was, Kagami could see some of the infatuation for what it was. Uchiha were sharp and explosive, and enjoyed the same in their partners; it was especially desirable for them to be _better_ at their chosen trade. An argument was the best way to learn a person, be it with fists or with words.

It was Izuna’s bittersweet crush that he remembered feeling clearly first.

The sweet sting of it.

Part of him hates that, but most of him couldn’t help being thankful.

It was that lingering sensation of Izuna’s feelings for Tobirama that kept Kagami from being lit Aflame once more at his cousin’s death. The loss of the only person who’d really cared that he hadn’t burnt himself apart like a supernova.

Dead, at the hands of the man he’d almost loved.

Kagami didn’t care for most Senju, was indifferent, but he’d hated Tobirama for that even as he’d blamed himself for it.

~*~

As one not directly in line for inheritance, Kagami was given more Shame than his cousins were. He did not have the privilege and protection of their pedigree and standing to keep the Marks from being carved into him.

He had many.

Still, when Izuna had been able, he’d taken Kagami’s licks for him; trying to spare the younger teenager what he could in his fragile emotional state.

Before the battle that had seen him slain, Izuna had stepped forward for him into the sights of the Elders and been whipped. He’d already been wounded from a previous skirmish with the Hyuuga, had hurried over to find Kagami because someone had warned him. Once a Marking began, the Shamed could not see a healer until they scarred over, until the Shame was written forever into their skin.

Kagami had told him he shouldn’t have done it, still mostly in that gray place where nothing really mattered, only his cousin in the vaguest sense. Because he was real, and he held him tightly when he felt like he would explode in a storm of fire and lightning.

Because he loved him.

He’d told him he shouldn’t have done it, should have let him take his own punishments for failure, but Izuna had loved him enough to step forward anyway.

And it had killed him.

~*~

Kagami had some hate for the Senju in him, but he hated the Uchiha more. Hated himself.

So, he Burned. Over and over again.

Endlessly Burning and being Reborn from his ashes each time. Something different, something less. Something more and more gray until there was only the haze to stick him in place.

~*~

Young as he was, he was still stronger than most others in the Clan, and so when they put him on the front lines he killed and killed and _killed_ until there was nothing left. That aching place that lacked the love his Chosen had given him – that Izuna had given him – was waiting for someone else to finally do the killing. For everything to stop so that he didn’t have to even _be_ anymore.

Kagami was so tired.

Kagami was so very, very tired.

Children and adults, everything in between, fell to his tanto and jutsu. The smell of burning flesh was barely distinguishable and ozone coated everything he owned as surely as bloodstains did.

His skin was sticky with blood and he wished that he didn’t have to feel every breath he took.

He wished that Izuna had just let him Burn, that he’d let the Clan smother him until he went out, depleted by rage and grief in that initial crack. If he had, then he’d still be alive, not dead for mistakes not his own and staring at him out of Madara’s face like a ghost.

Madara treated him like a cask of black powder, about to explode at any moment and take them all with him. He looked at him as if he was partially hoping for it so that he would have an excuse.

An excuse to kill Kagami or to kill himself, was the question that he didn’t care to ask.

~*~

When the Uchiha surrendered to the Senju, Kagami was knee deep in bodies with remnants of his platoon huddled behind him. His Susanoo guarding them as his eyes bled tears he could not cry for those lost, chakra a thready thing he could barely feel beneath the grief.

The gray haze only fell when his Mangekyō welled into his eyes, bringing forth all of that remembered pain once again. That clarity he so sought to escape.

On the other side of the battlefield where the Senju stood, a messenger reached them, one of Kagami’s Clan with them.

The word ‘ceasefire’ was thrown around and Kagami stared blankly at the wary form of the man who was speaking to him, still Burning.

His fingertips were tacky with blood when he rubbed them together, considering. When he lifted it to stare at scars and calluses, the crooked angle to bones healed wrong, he took a long moment to consider.

Some called the fog of being hollowed out and set Aflame what true peace was. A cessation of need or want, simple existence.

Some called it an abomination of the passions that fueled them. A twisting of the gift of Choosing when the heart Chose wrong.

Kagami didn’t care about that.

Kagami didn’t care about anything anymore.

He…

His red eyes slid to look at one of the huddled children behind him, the glassy eyed face as familiar to him as any first time combatant. Ashen in a way he could remember being during his first battle, though he’d been younger than this one, when the laws had been different.

Izuna had liked to curl around Kagami’s smaller form when the younger members died on the battlefront. He liked to shelter the shell of what his cousin was with his body as if it would keep the Shinigami from finding him when his ashes took Flight from his pyre. He would pet shaking hands through the curls of Kagami’s hair and fervently swear that some day it could stop. That someday they wouldn’t have to die anymore.

Letting his cousin do as he would to take comfort, the younger teen had closed his eyes and focused on the foreign warmth of Izuna’s love.

They were moments of… light, in the dull gray of this Burnt Kagami’s existence.

_“I just want to not have to count the bodies anymore, Kaga-kun. I just want to forget the tally of losses. I wish you didn’t have to hurt this way.”_

So this shadow of a person, this remaining bit of Uchiha Kagami, looked forward again at the messenger and let his eyes bleed black. Gray slid into place once more and exhaustion slid into his heavy lungs.

Susanoo’s hauntingly strong arms born of emotional fragility, too, faded.

~*~

Whatever Senju Hashirama liked to claim, he hadn’t bargained for peace but for the submission of the Uchiha Clan. He’d brought them to their knees with his power alone, cracked the pillar of their Head, who wore the Mantle of Feathers.

Only the Elders and the truly embittered actually cared for the how, though.

Most of the Clan were so relieved that they didn’t have to worry about their inevitable slaughter at the hands of Hashirama that they went along easily. Some were just waiting for the other scale to drop and were taking this as a temporary reprieve from the endless Clan War.

Kagami didn’t care.

He let the Elders mark him with Shame, he let Hikaku bully him into formal dress when necessary, he let the children who had huddled behind him drag him around. He let the Senju stare at him like he was a monster even as he played at how Izuna would have wanted things.

Kagami didn’t care.

Madara with Izuna’s eyes looked down at him uncomfortably and told him that Senju Tobirama had apologized for Izuna’s death, and he Burned.

Coiling the desperation of Susanoo internally caused blood vessels to pop and his guts to roil as he nearly boiled himself alive.

Madara watched for a long moment, before he reached out to siphon off the chakra. This was also a kind of punishment, a different kind of Mark, for letting someone else take the blame for something that was ultimately Kagami’s fault.

The inevitable comet of his older cousin’s chakra was a stifling thing as he brought Kagami’s chakra under control so that he didn’t implode. Perhaps not killing him was part of his desire to see the younger man suffer for what had been taken away from him, for the Chosen who were gone.

Kagami didn’t care.

Madara didn’t matter.

Izuna had loved him, and Kagami had clung to it.

~*~

When he’d first approached Tobirama, he hadn’t really had anything in mind. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to see him at all, if he wanted to kill him, or if he wanted to die by his hand so that he might share this with Izuna.

He hadn’t expected… well, Tobirama.

While tall and broad, physically stronger than Kagami and eight years his senior with an intellect that rivaled a Nara’s, he was rather awkward. Perfectly polite, perfectly punctual.

Perfectly strange.

Sometimes his words canted into something that was nearly another dialect, and he would absently do chakra exercises that made the other Uchiha, and the Senju, nervous. Water would twist around him in interesting shapes absently while the man did whatever he was working on, be it requisition forms or complicated Seal formula. He would forget to eat often and so had snacks stashed in nearly every corner of any room he had reason to be in for a length of time.

His hands were sword callused and ink stained, and sometimes he fell asleep at his desk and his starlight colored hair stuck to moon pale skin on one side. He snorted when he laughed and had choked on his tea during a meeting with a minor Clan and stone faced his way through it with chakra manipulation.

When he was feeling uncertain or unhappy, he would wear kimono and yukata that had been crafted in Uzushiogakure and pinch at the hems with his fingertips. He had a collection of seashells imbued with strangers’ chakra settled in his office and in his rooms.

Stoic in the face of his own Clan’s flinching, in the face of his older brother’s callous disregard, Senju Tobirama reminded him of Izuna, and yet was nothing like him.

Izuna had clung to Kagami, desperate not to be alone, not to lose another family member. Izuna had insinuated himself into Kagami’s life and made him his responsibility, in spite of what he had desired.

Tobirama was hesitant when they touched, but listened when Kagami spoke, no matter how dryly, brittle but present. Tobirama made a quiet space next to himself, bewildered by the very fact that someone wished to exist in his space.

Tobirama was afraid of Kagami. Of what he made him feel.

Sometimes he wondered what someone who so frequently fell into the gray felt like to a Sensor of his caliber, but usually he didn’t care to know. Whatever he felt like, it didn’t seem to bother the older man.

Izuna had been terrified of everything else. Of anything that could take from him.

In the gray that had held onto Kagami, Izuna had been a point of light that came and went, fleeting as his needs took him elsewhere. Finding Kagami when _he_ needed to be needed, more than anything else. Tobirama reached back and made a bridge out of hesitance, steady. He asked for nothing and was flustered when he received anything at all, no matter how small, and reciprocated in kind.

Izuna hadn’t known how to reach him, hadn’t tried; once Aflame, there was little left but cinders.

And yet. And _yet_.

Tobirama hadn’t known that there was supposed to be little left of Kagami but a husk that was waiting to shatter, waiting to be set to pyre and Fly Free with the Shinigami. Didn’t know that inviting the younger man along with him rather than pulling him helped regain some of what had been lost. Didn’t know that small things like asking a question on drink preferences made Kagami think about it, to step outside of the grayness of apathy.

Tobirama asked _Who are you? What do you want? What do you need?_ And Kagami could only say _I don’t know._

And then… he helped him find out. Who this remnant was. What he could become.

Kagami had been loved by Izuna, but Kagami was relearning love with Tobirama.

~*~

Madara was angry with him again.

Madara was always angry with him.

He was unhappy that he was spending so much time with Tobirama, that the Senju had begun to ask for his presence at Clan meetings and political discussions. He was unhappy that Kagami stepped out of the Compound without a prompt, without being called for. He was unhappy that when people wanted to ask questions of the Uchiha, that they went to Kagami or Hikaku, rather than to Madara.

There was no need for any of these excuses, because Kagami was always willing to take the punishments owed to him for being the death of Izuna.

This new happiness with Tobirama, this fragile, fragile beginning, was worth every line pressed into his skin, no matter if heat scored him.

It wasn’t as if Kagami could change it, could change how Madara was slowly boiling alive, too powerful for anyone to sate his chakra needs. He could no more turn back time than he could keep Hashirama from stamping out edict after edict that gave Tobirama migraines.

It was what it was.

Shame was heavy, but Kagami didn’t care.

~*~

“Kagami.”

That low voice was welcome as the younger man opened his eyes, staring up into lovely carmine eyes set in a handsome face.

“Tobira,” he smiled, gray lifting a little at the sight of this man. “You’re back.”

Pale lips twisted down at the corners, drawing his gaze to the sharp red lines that accentuated defined cheekbones and a strong chin. He wanted to touch.

It had been a long time since he’d wanted anything, but a lot of things were allowed by Tobirama.

“You’re hurt,” was what was said in return. “Let me heal you.”

“No,” perhaps more abrupt than Kagami usually was, but he’d lingered back in the gray for several days while Tobirama had been gone on assignment; his Shame throbbed. “You can’t.”

Those lips thinned as a broad hand hovered uncertainly over his chest. There was a burn there that made it difficult to breath, a nontraditional punishment, and so not a part of his Shame, but deserved, nonetheless.

Madara was always angry.

In some ways, Kagami was glad for the gray that enshrouded him over the agony of rage that consumed Madara, but usually, he was indifferent.

And sometimes, he just wanted everything to Burn as he had.

“The ritualistic abuse of your Clan is barbaric,” the man snapped, scowling as he knelt at his side, radiating worry and Water chakra like a balm. “You’re getting an infection.”

“I –”

“Please. Kagami.”

Staring up into those brilliant eyes in a face that he should hate but couldn’t help but love, following in Izuna’s footsteps even in this.

Kagami took as deep a breath as he could, eyes sliding shut at the pain. It was sharp, and he wondered if his last breathes would feel like this someday.

“… If they know, it will be worse,” he admitted quietly, dark eyes opening, features wane with pain and exhaustion, the gray clinging to him. “There will be consequences.”

Kagami had lived in the years since Izuna’s death knowing only part of the ire that Madara held for him, taking only pieces of that wrath. Unknowingly, the Senju conflict had given his Mantle something else to direct his fury towards, something else to burn himself upon. Without the Clan War, there was no one to punish but Kagami, and despite how he would wish it, his body could only handle so much punishment at a time.

Dying from his wounds was not what he deserved for Izuna’s death; he _deserved_ the Shame.

He knew that Tobirama wouldn’t see it that way, though, and for his sake, Kagami would risk unshackling a little more of that caged calamity inside Madara.

“We go to Uzushio at the end of the week,” Tobirama returned immediately, relief softening the corners of his eyes as his hand glowed with jutsu. “If we keep you secluded until then, everything will be fine. I’ll keep watch for you, Kagami.”

The most powerful Sensor of the generation looking after him was reassuring.

That it was _Tobirama_ , was even better.

~*~

When they got to Uzushio, a place more filled with light and air than anywhere else that Kagami had ever seen, ever imagined, it was like meeting Tobirama all over again.

There was an energy to his movements, a freedom in his features, that just wasn’t there the rest of the time. A lilting note of playfulness and happiness that was usually smothered beneath duty and strain. Beneath the heaviness of being feared and respected rather than liked or loved.

Wind blew brilliant white hair about and sunlight defined the sharp angles of him through his thinner yukata, and Kagami felt his heart in his throat.

The Nagisa were amazing, but it was nothing on how lovely they made Tobirama, simply by accepting him amongst their numbers.

Uzushio had helped to open Tobirama’s heart, the Nagisa patiently holding the door, and Kagami had been given the chance to step inside. He would always be grateful for that, for the family fleet teaching Tobirama how to live in spite of fear and dread, so that he in turn could teach Kagami.

He loved them for it, when he could barely comprehend being able to love his Tobira.

Everything was so bright, so clear, on the edge of the sea.

~*~

It burned.

He Burned.

Blood slid down his face as he stood between his cousin and the Village that Izuna hadn’t lived to dream of, Susanoo being crushed by Susanoo. It was like de ja vu, like a mirrored memory, with children and civilians hiding behind him as he stood before death, waiting.

Madara had finished boiling himself away, and all that was left was the crazed calamity made of rage and destruction. None of the Uchiha were strong enough to defeat him, not even Kagami, who stood as near his equal as there was in the Clan.

His skin blackened and charred, pulling away slowly beneath the onslaught of black fire he was losing ground against.

Unaware of when Hashirama joined the fray and dragged Madara away, Kagami let himself drift into the gray, where nothing mattered. Where he could die, or he could live but there was little point in doing either.

Vaguely, he was drawn back by the presence of Tobirama at his side, speaking frantically and chakra a beautiful halo around him that made him smile. It cracked his lips and blood slid down his stained face, but he couldn’t help it even if the harried, panicked expression on Tobirama’s face was anything but pretty.

“M-Mmmad’ra,” bubbled out of his torn lips as his throbbing eyes stared into crimson.

“Anija took care of it,” was the prompt answer as his whole body went numb with more than the gray, jutsu taking effect. “There’s – there’s a lot of cleanup, but you managed to hold him for long enough that there were few casualties.”

“’Obira,” slurred his mouth. “’Ve you.”

His lover swallowed thickly, features pinching in a way he hadn’t seen in a long time as grief slid onto his handsome face, dark circles under his eyes.

“I love you too,” was said lowly, even as determination blazed to life once again on his face. “And I’ll tell you again when you are healed and awake.”

Smiling with bloody teeth, Kagami let go.

~*~

When next he woke, scarred but alive, Tobirama was in Uzushio and Hashirama was going to ruin everything that the man Kagami had learned to love had built.

He and Mito waited for the return of their respective other halves, and both knew that more loss awaited them.

Pieces of Tobirama were broken when he returned, and Kagami knew how to hold yourself together after Burning. Shattering seemed similar, and remembering Izuna’s arms around him, holding onto him to hold them both together helped him to steady them both.

Kagami wasn’t the same as who he’d been before he’d Burned, but no one was truly the same after death. Even those not their own.

Everything he had learned, he would use to help the one who’d retaught him love and light, and he’d take whatever Shame necessary to continue to do so.

~*~

It hurt, to let Tobira go to his death, but he understood the relief of setting down a burden and not having to pick it up again. He understood the temptation hidden in the gray. The knowledge that the pain could end and there could be time to rest between the chaos.

Kagami did not begrudge him that, did not deny him his reprieve. It was only that Kagami had learned how to live again with Tobira, and to go without, after so long together…

Tobirama had led him out of the gray and into the light, had done so endlessly over the years together. He had done so in turn for him when he could, but perhaps it wasn’t as much as he could have done. He hurt, knowing that his love would die now, away from him and the ocean he so loved, for a Village that Izuna had never dreamed and would sour without Tobirama in it.

He didn’t know what to do.

Continuing on as he had been was perhaps all that he _could_ do, but it didn’t seem like enough, not for a world that had so little light left in it.

~*~

He expected Danzō’s knife in his back and smiled over his shoulder at the student of his lover, a man who he had considered a friend. Little had managed to pierce the haze of gray over the intervening years, and while he would miss his child, he was tired.

The younger man’s dark eyes flinched and the hand on the kunai imbedded in his spine trembled at the gentle expression directed at him.

Activating his Mangekyō, Kagami Burned one last time, reliving what it was to be Aflame as he burnt out his own eyes with Amaterasu. The amount of whispering about the Sharingan made it little guess as to what it was that he had been betrayed for; eyes which were the key to a grief stricken god. The old ways were dying with the growth of a Village undreamed, and soon he thought that many things would be forgotten.

It worth was less than in a world like this, everything, where he could only be gray without someone who would stand in the light with him.

This was a just punishment, for failing Tobirama. For failing Izuna.

Even the Great Bird can only Burn so many times, and Kagami had Burned time and time again. He was tired.

There was no more Rebirth.

Finally, he could rest.

**Author's Note:**

> Amatsumikaboshi  
> In Japanese mythology, Ama-tsu-mika-boshi (天津甕星, "Dread Star of Heaven", "August Star of Heaven"), also called Ame-no-kagase-o (天香香背男, "Scarecrow Male of Heaven", "Brilliant Male"), was originally a malevolent Shinto god.


End file.
